News Release

Calls to Remove Head of DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz

January 5, 2016

The activist group RootsAction.org says that during the first four days of the new year, more than 23,000 people signed the group’s petition — many adding passionate comments — asking the Democratic National Committee to remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz as its chair. See the petition and comments here.

RootsAction’s petition states: “In addition to her recent attempt to deny the Bernie Sanders campaign access to its own voter files, Wasserman Schultz has tried in other ways to minimize competition for her candidate, Hillary Clinton. She has done this by scheduling very few primary debates, and scheduling them at times of low TV viewing.

“In Congress, she has served as a pro-militarist and corporatist tool of the high bidders. Among recent disgraceful acts was her vote to enable racial discrimination in car buying. Enough is enough.”

HOWIE KLEIN, howieklein at aol.com, @downwithtyranny
Klein is a retired music executive, his career included a dozen years as president of Reprise Records. He now blogs at downwithtyranny.blogspot.com and has closely followed the career of Wasserman Schultz.

He said today: “RootsAction came up with a great way to launch 2016 — removing Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chair of the DNC. A better idea, though not as feasible, would have been to travel back in time and warn Obama what would happen if he followed Rahm Emanuel’s terrible advice and appointed her to the job. They reached almost 20,000 signatories in two days!

“Wasserman Schultz first came to my attention when, as a Florida state senator, she drew her own future congressional district — making it as ‘Jewish’ as she could — in return for giving Republicans in the state legislature unfair and unwarranted redistricting advantages. The next time she popped up on my radar was in 2008 when she was suddenly declared ‘a rising star,’ which, in Congress invariably means someone with the stench of corruption coming from every pore of their body who coaxes money out of businessmen and special interests looking for special treatment and then shares some of the loot with colleagues less talented at that kind of graft and wheeling-and-dealing. She was made chair of the DCCC’s ‘Red to Blue’ program, a program she so tarnished and disgraced that they were forced to change the name after they fired her.

“The task of Red to Blue was simple — replacing a Republican congressmember with a Democratic congressmember — turning a seat ‘blue.’ Maybe no one explained it to her properly but her first announced goal was to undercut the three viable Democratic candidates in her own backyard, Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, by endorsing her three Republican cronies in those seats, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the two Diaz-Balart brothers. At first she dug in her heals and doubled down but as pressure mounted she eventually backed down and was quietly given a job where she wouldn’t be able to cause as much harm and embarrassment.

“Eventually she tried jockeying for the DCCC chairmanship but Pelosi thought even … Steve Israel would do a better job and she gave him the job instead. Rahm Emanuel made sure Debbie got the DNC chair as a consolation prize, an utter disaster for the Democratic Party right from the start. And now, as Roots Action put it, ‘the head of one of the two big political parties in the United States is trying to choose its nominee by reducing input from voters.’ That would be Debbie, a member of the Wall Street-owned New Dems, and a bagman for right-wing Cuban interests, for the sugar industry and for the private prison industry.

“In addition to her recent attempt to deny the Bernie Sanders campaign access to its own voter files, Wasserman Schultz has tried in other ways to minimize competition for her candidate, Hillary Clinton. She has done this by scheduling very few primary debates, and scheduling them at times of low TV viewing.

“The results, thus far, have been bad from the perspective of Wasserman Schultz’s own party, including domination of the media’s extensive election coverage by the other big party. Another result has been reduced exposure for the Democratic candidate polling strongest against Republican rivals, Bernie Sanders.

“Wasserman Schultz has also agreed to debates that have been run by corporate and/or incompetent moderators who have failed to even raise many of the most important topics of concern to voters — for example, climate change and the TPP.”